Adventures in the Café

Somebody Lied to You

I don't pretend to be any sort of music officianado, but there are some rules even the most musically-challenged can understand. My tastes tend to run far and wide; I'm not specifically into anything but love bits and pieces of all. I guess the word we're looking for is ecclectic. If I can sing along with it and Mariah Carey isn't the artist, then I'm more or less happy.

Recently I've rediscovered a love of eighties hair bands and classic rock that has me a little worried. I'm not sure when exactly this happened, but now when Boston's "More than a Feeling" comes on I rock out a little. The boy and I were driving and having an appropriate and sophisticated adult conversation when I started squealing and ordering him to turn up the radio 'cause Bon Jovi's "Bad Medicine" had come on the radio. I catch myself saying "all RIGHT!" when Platinum Blonde comes on the radio.

If only this were the only music felony I was guilty of. Back in early highschool I went with my parents to see two CHUM Rockin' Back to the Sixties concerts. As geeky as that in itself sounds, they were a lot of fun. However, I didn't just go out of idle curiosity or 'cause my parents made me. Nope, I had a reason to be there. The first year the reason was Micky Dolenz, the second Davy Jones. I actually wrote in my diary after the first concert that when I saw Micky Dolenz, who does look like an ugly monkey, that "words can't describe how I felt." I hopped on the Monkees' bandwagon a little late, but I did hop on. I watched the show and or taped it every night it was on Much Music. I bought their tapes, and (this is the crowning touch) I belonged to a (maybe the) Monkees' fanzine. That's right. I subscribed for one year to Monkee Business Fanzine.

This was a predictible piece of drivel and the people contributing were equally as sad and pathetic as I must have been. I remember when I woke from my reverie and realized what a freak I was becoming and how bizarre those I had aligned myself with were. I read an article in which a woman was describing having gone to a concert that some members of the Monkees were performing at. She was writing about what a beautiful day it had been for this outdoor event when she penned "God must have been a Monkees fan." I stopped reading the magazine.

All of this is apropos of what I heard on the radio on my way home from meeting Big M two Fridays ago. It was nineish, so stations were starting their live to air programs from various clubs. This is when I heard the extended dance remix someone had done of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." I may not know much, and I may have bad taste, but I know how wrong this is. Nirvana wasn't about a killer dance beat or clubbing, it was about providing an angry self-indulgent druggie a forum for that anger. Don't turn their shit into a club mix.

I like Nirvana, they appeal to me on the level of how much I enjoy angry alternative music where people scream and say inappropriate things. Nirvana fit right in, remember "Rape me"? There are some songs, and some groups you just can't make dance remixes for. It's inappropiate. I feel about this the same way G and I felt the first time I heard Faith Hill doing "Piece of My Heart." I called G right away (we were in grade 10 or 11).

Lynx: Hey, are you watching CMT?
G: Are you serious? Of course not.
Lynx: Turn it to CMT, but brace yourself.
G: Okay, one sec.
Silence
Lynx: Are you watching?
Silence
Lynx: G?
G: She is evil. Evil. And she must be stopped. Janice is rolling in her grave.
Lynx: So is Willie Nelson, he wrote it I think.
G: He's not dead
Lynx: Oh, well as my grandfather used to say 'I haven't seen him in awhile.'
G: Fair enough. This is horrible. This is awful. THIS IS WRONG FOR SO MANY REASONS. SHE'S TURNED THIS SONG PERKY. THAT BITCH!!

Or at least that's how I like to remember the call.